Martina Sanchez Pinillos obtains her M.Sc. degree

Last week, Martina Sanchez Pinillos successfully defended her Master Thesis, entitled 'Assessing forest response-type diversity to natural disturbances in Peninsular Spain and the Balearic Islands'. Martina has elaborated a thorough response-trait database for most woody species in the Spanish Forest Inventory (IFN) and has calculated several indices to assess forest resilience to the main abiotic disturbances (fire, drought and windstorms). This work will contribute to advance in the understanding of the main traits that promote forest resilience, and to assess how resilience distributes across biomes, regions, and forest types.

Martina's work has been mentored by Lluís Coll, (CTFC - FiDBosc), and Aitor Ameztegui (UQAM), and supervised by Santiago Saura (UPM). The defence took place last Thursday (July, 10th) at the School of Forestry of the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, and the board was composed by Rafael Escribano, Juan Oliet and Carmen Collada, professors at the UPM. Martina will soon start her PhD at FiDBosc, supervised by Lluís and Aitor.

Congratulations, Martina!

Martina, during the defence

Aitor Ameztegui, awarded by the Spanish Society of Forest Sciences for his doctoral thesis

Aitor Ameztegui, former student of the FiDBosc group, has recently been awarded by the Spanish Society of Forest Sciences (SECF) as the second best Ph.D. Thesis in Forest Sciences in 2013. The thesis, entitled Forest dynamics at the montane-subalpine ecotone in the Pyrenees, was supervised by Dr. Lluís Coll and was defended in CTFC last July. It aimed at a better understanding of the main drivers of forest dynamics in mixed mountain forests. One of the main findings of Aitor's work was the substantial role that land-use changes play in the observed patterns of recent forest expansion in the Pyrenees, as well as the effect that shade tolerance can play interacting with the expected consequences of climate change in tree demography.

Currently, Aitor is developing a post-doctoral stage in the Centre for Forest Research of the Université du Québec à Montréal (Canada), where he works in the integration of forest management alternatives under global change scenarios.

The award ceremony will take place on friday 21st at the Palace of Santa Cruz in Valladolid, coinciding with the celebration of the International Day of Forests.

Congratulations, Aitor!

New Article: Mushroom production as an alternative for rural development in a mountainous area.

A regional case study In this new article, previously published mushroom yield models were combined with the national forest inventory and forest maps to predict the potential mushroom production of Catalonia. This article highlights the importance of NWFP on a Mediterranean region and calls for the development of strategic forest policies that take into account such a relevant asset. BONET J.A., GONZÁLEZ-OLABARRIA J.R., MARTÍNEZ DE ARAGÓN J. (2014) Mushroom production as an alternative for rural development in a mountainous area. A regional case study. Journal of Mountain science 11 (2): 535-543